The ruling classes were particularly disturbed by the fact that...

The ruling classes were particularly disturbed by the fact that, from the very beginning of his mission, the Messenger of Allāh had rejected concepts such as social superiority, pride in ancestry, and Arabism.[^3]Muhammad viewed himself, first and foremost, as an “admonisher” [ nadhīr ] and a “guardian” of his people rather than its “king” [ malik ].[^4] As he put it himself, “Surely I am not a king [ malik ] … I am but the son of a woman who ate dried meat” (Tirmidhī).

And to the scandal of the Makkan oligarchy, he abolished all distinction between race and class with the decisive declaration that: “All human beings are equal like the teeth of a comb. There is no superiority of an Arab over a non Arab, of a non-Arab over an Arab, of a white man over a black man or of a male over a female.

The only merit in God's estimation is righteousness.”[^5] In truth, the Prophet never manifested in any of his sayings or ahādīth that belonging to the tribe of Quraysh or social status were necessary conditions for being elected Imām or Caliph.

Abū Bakr, on the other hand, always maintained, in accord with his background, that the right to the Caliphate belonged to the members of the tribe of Quraysh by the simple fact that they were descendants of “the most honorable Arabs.”[^6] Whoever examines the Islāmic accounts of the period will notice with great surprise that the sector of Muslims who proclaimed Abū Bakr as the First Caliph in the saqīfah soon lost the esoteric and spiritual significance of the Imāmate or the Caliphate, if they ever possessed it at all.

For them, as we have said, spiritual authority and temporal power were united in the person of Muhammad by the fact that he was the Messenger of God and the Intercessor between God and man.[^7] When it came to Imām 'Alī, he was viewed by the old oligarchy, in the best of cases, as merely a half-Muhammad, blessed with an inspired character and the spiritual wisdom of a prophet.[^8] They did not, however, consider him fit to assume the functions of legal administrator and political leader.

For the followers of 'Alī, among whom were the closest and most famous companions of the Prophet,[^9] this separation between spiritual authority and temporal power was intolerable. It was not so much the political Imāmate that 'Alī inherited from Muhammad which drew the Shī'ah.